Category Archives: Adventure

The Yellow Boat

Posted on by
1

Winter visited us again this past weekend, but spring teased us a bit the week before, so we know it can happen. This got me thinking about spring cleanup and all the little relics that are often left behind in the draws of ranches like ours, waiting to be repaired or picked up by the junk guy, but more likely just staying there for years reminding us of the time when we were younger and it ran.

Which got me thinking about my husband’s yellow boat.

The Yellow Boat

Lake Sakakawea

A few days of warm weather will get the plans rolling. And the smell of the thaw, the sound of the water, the blue sky and sun and things uncovered by melting snow had me poking around the place, in search of projects and things I could accomplish.

And in my search I stumbled upon one of the ranch’s most unique relics. Sitting next to the shop covered loosely by a blue tarp and snow turned to ice water is Husband’s yellow boat, the one he brought with us to the ranch when we were first married.

I want to talk about this boat because it’s almost April now and it’s time to start making plans to cast a catfish line, pull on some cutoffs and grill something already.

I want to talk about this boat because I want to talk about boy I once knew who spent hours in the garage with his dad, sanding, scraping, painting and turning the remnants of an old wood and fiberglass flat bottom custom junkyard find into a 11 by 6 foot piece of bright yellow marine-time dream come true with a 40 horse Johnson, quite a mighty motor for a boat that small.

A boat they were planning on turning into a legend, buzzing around Lake Sakakawea and turning heads.

And as soon as the yellow paint dried, that’s exactly what they did.  Father and son proudly loaded it up in the trailer and headed to the big water, visions of speed and notoriety bouncing between them in the pickup before they plopped that boat in the water and squeezed in side-by-side, shoulders squished together, chins nearly resting on their knees, reaping the benefits of the many hours spent on dry land turning a relic into a masterpiece.

They pushed it to its limits, testing what it had, wondering if they never slowed down if they might just keep going forever, out toward the buttes that hold the lake in place, to the river and then into the ocean, a man and a boy in a tiny yellow boat they made together after the sun went down on their real lives and that boat turned into all that mattered between them…

But boys need to become men on their own time, so they brought that boat to shore so that boy could drive his old Thunderbird out of the driveway to the highway that would take him away and back again to live on a ranch by that lake with a girl who used to sit beside him in that old car when he drove too fast and played his music too loud.

But I never sat beside him in that yellow boat until one day I came home to find my new husband holding a fishing pole and a tiny cooler full to the brim with beer and a container of worms.

“We’re going fishing,” he said.

And off we went on a hot July evening, the windows rolled down on the little white pickup as we followed the prairie trail down to our secret spot on the lake below the buttes. The place without a boat ramp, a picnic table or any sign of human life…

My new husband and I pushed that little boat in the water, navigating the deep mud on the banks of the lake before we jumped in and sat back-to-back with our poles in the water, the little cooler on my lap, trolling the shores for hours without a bite before the sun threatened to drop below the horizon, convincing us to call it a night.

Funny how fast night came then when my husband, in an attempt to hook up that little boat and pull us all back home, backed up just a bit too far, and, well, there we were in our secret fishing spot stuck in the mud up to the floorboards, miles from the highway, cell phone reception, or any sign of human life.

And there are many relics on this place, old tractors, used up pickups, tires and spare parts that need to be hauled away and given new life. But over the hill in the barnyard, covered by a tarp and a fresh dusting of spring snow sits a little yellow boat on a little trailer that was never meant for fishing…in fact, now that I think of it, that boat might not have been made for anything really, except to be made.

I will be playing music and telling stories March 28 at 7 PM at the Fargo/Moorhead Community Theater in The Hjemkomst Center in Moorhead, MN. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at the door or in advance at www.jessieveedermusic.com/shows Hope to see you there!

Rescue Mission

Posted on by
2
Listen to the poddcast here or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

My three-year niece, Emma has a bird book. She stands on the couch in the living room and looks out the window with that book in her chubby little hands and marks the ones she sees. It’s adorable, and that kid doesn’t miss a beat. She’s looking up at the sky whenever she can.

The other day I was walking with all the girls, my two daughters, who are five and seven, and Emma and her sister Ada, who is also five and probably loves animals the most of any kid I’ve ever met. Like, she has a gift with them, truly. Now bear with me here, this all matters because as we approached my house I noticed Emma stop dead in her tracks to stare intently at something way up in a tall tree by the road. When I caught up to her I looked up too and realized that what had her attention was a bird, about twenty feet up in an ash tree, flapping and panicked, trying to escape the small piece of twine that had somehow wrapped around its leg and attached him to a small branch. I later learned it was a cedar waxwing, which explained why other cedar waxwings would occasionally fly in to check on it, wondering why it couldn’t join the flock.

It was heartbreaking to watch, and even more heartbreaking to watch these four little girls discover the bird’s misery. Edie, my oldest, looked at me with urgency and, of course said, “We have to help it! Hurry!” Which is exactly what would have been going through my mind as a 7 year old, and, actually, it was going through my mind as a mom then too, but with a little more apprehension because I was home by myself and I’m afraid of heights and, frankly, a little unnerved by flapping birds. Also, so many things could go wrong in this situation if I actually figured out a way to get up there. Like I wouldn’t make it in time for one, or if I did, the bird might be gravely injured. Or, maybe of more concern, I could be gravely injured, I mean, I don’t have a great track record with ladders.

Anyway, if you’ve ever been in an urgent situation where four innocent and sweet little animal-loving girls are looking to you to SAVE A LITERAL LIFE, you can’t blame me for trying to do something. So they told me they’d keep watch while I ran to the house and got the ladder…and the pickup… because my plan was to, you guessed it, back the pickup up to the tree, put the ladder in the box, climb up there with my scissors and bibbidi bobbidi boo, release the wax wing like a Disney Princess Superhero.

But first I needed to call my sister to hold the ladder, grab me those gloves, and, in case it all went south, divert the attention and call the ambulance. Only a sister would come tearing in the yard in minutes flat after only being told, “there is a bird situation here.”

Turns out, once I got the ladder in the back of the pickup and got to the third rung, I also needed her to give me a pep talk. “If you’re going to do this, you just gotta commit” she said handing me the scissors and then wrapping a tight grip on my leg because even though we both knew that wasn’t going to keep me from falling to a bloody death in the name of a tiny bird, it made us both feel better. Oh, and also she needed to call off the dogs that suddenly came to investigate, both of us imaging that unfortunate scenario.

Anyway, if these girls ever say I never did anything for them, I’m documenting it now in this publication that me,  their mother, who is indeed truly afraid of heights, backed our pickup up to that tall tree, placed the ladder in the bed, climbed it, pulled the branch attached to the bird down to my level and detached it, untangled the tiny little bird leg from the twine and didn’t scream once (or at least not too loud) in front of my audience of little girls. In fact, I held that bird long enough for all of them to get a quick, closer look and then let it go, off safe and sound into the trees.

And then I sopped the sweat from my face and calmed my shaky legs and we all went on with our weird, wonderful little lives feeling good about the one we all saved. And Emma marked Cedar Waxwing in her bird book.

When I grow up

Posted on by
1

 

Today I want to share a piece that closes out my book “Coming Home.” I wrote it when I was still in my twenties in our first year back at the ranch. I was seeing this place through new eyes, realizing what time can do to us, clinging tight to the things that made me as I was discovering them again.

Those gray hairs I talk about are pushing through strong and I realize in the re-reading, I didn’t define what “grown up” actually means. Is it now? Is it ever?

I grab my flannel and go look for crocuses.

This week on the podcast I sit down with my oldest daughter, Edie, to talk about what it means to be an adult. And why kids like the mud. And yetis. Listen here or wherever you get podcasts.

When I grow up

When I grow up I want to be the kind of woman who lets her hair grow long and wild and silver. When I’m grown I hope I remember to keep my flannel shirts draped over chairs, hanging in the entryway and sitting on the seat of the pickup where they are ready and waiting for me to pull them on and take off somewhere, the scent of horsehair on the well-worn sleeve.

When I grow up I want to remember every spring with the smell of the first buds blooming on the wild plum trees what this season means to me. When I grow up I pray I don’t forget to follow that smell down into the draws where the air falls cooler the closer you get to the creek and the wind is calm.

When I grow up I hope I don’t find I have become offended by a bit of mud tracked from boots onto the kitchen floor. I hope I keep the windows open on the best summer evenings with no regard for the air conditioning or the dust, because a woman can only be so concerned with messes that can be cleaned another day, especially when she needs to get the crocuses in some water.

When I’m older and my memory is full, I hope that the smell of damp hay will still remind me of feeding cows with my dad on the first warm day of spring when the sun warmed the snow enough to make small rivers to run on our once frozen trail. I hope it reminds me how alive I felt wading in that stream while he rolled out the bale and I tested the limits of the rubber on my boots.

And when my hair turns silver I hope I remember that my favorite colors are the colors of the seasons changing from brown to white to green to gold and back again. I pray I never curse the rain and that I don’t forget that next to the rosy flush in my baby’s cheeks, rain is my favorite color of them all.

Yes, when I’m old and my knees don’t bend the way they need to bend to get me on the back of a horse, I hope I’m still able to bury my face in her mane, to run my hands across her back and lean on her body while I remember the way my spirits lifted as she carried me to the hilltops.

I hope I recall how the first ride of spring made my legs stiff, my back creak and my backside sore, even as a young woman with muscles and tall boots.

Yes, boots! When I am old I hope I will wear my red wedding boots every once in a while and remember how I stood alone in them out in the cow pasture as a young woman waiting for the horses and wagon to come over the hill and take me to the oak tree where my friends and family gathered and the man I loved was waiting to marry me.

My red boots will remind me, so in all the shuffle and lost things that become our lives, I hope I remember to save them.

And as I watch the lines form on my husband’s face, little wrinkles around his eyes from work and worry, I hope I remember to say something funny, to tease him a bit, so I might be reminded again how he got the most important ones, the ones that run the deepest.

Yes, when I’m old and my hair is silver and long and wild, I hope those things that made me—the dirt turned to mud, a good man’s laughter, the soft breath of my child asleep on my chest, the strong back of a horse, the rain that falls on the north buttes and the scent of summer rolled up in a hay bale at the end of a long winter—will be there to see me out, happy and softened and weathered, just like the flannel I’ll remember to leave draped over the chair…

Stuck Season

Posted on by
1
This week on the podcast we talk stuck stories and I share a rough cut of a song from the new album. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.


I don’t know what comes over us when the snow melts and forms spontaneous rushing rivers in the barnyard, in the ditches, and through the trees, but I will tell you it’s not exclusive to the kids. I heard my neighbor’s grown man son took his kayak out the other day to see where the water would take him and I was immediately jealous that I hadn’t thought of it.

Yes, the first day the weather hit above 50 degrees my daughters were out chasing the runoff in their shorts and rubber boots and skinny white legs. And I was following right behind on the same mission, only in long pants because I have learned some lessons in my advanced age.

Like no matter your careful intentions on this mission, you will always wind up with the entire creek over the tops of your boots. Not a soul can help it after months and months in a deep freeze. We always go a bit too far.

And it seems the same goes with the mud. It could be. Or it could be hereditary, or it could be that I just really wanted to get closer to the first new calf of the season on our way home from celebrating Easter in town with my husband’s family. Turns out the sight of a cute calf makes you forget that just 24 hours ago that little mud puddle was a snow bank. Turns out off-roading in a SUV/Grocery Getter on the first warm day of the year with two kids and everything the Easter bunny could fit in the back is a dumb idea. I sunk into mud half up my tires immediately. It was only by pure willpower and utter embarrassment at the thought of having to call my brother-in-law to pull me out that I was able to maneuver out of that sticky situation. I counted that as a bullet dodged and moved on with my life.

The next few days were warmer yet, like 70 degrees! We hadn’t seen this since the Middle Ages! My little sister called to see if we wanted to go walk the creek bottoms and float sticks, even though our darling daughters were plumb happy with the little rivers forming puddles and running in the ditches in our yards. But the responsible adults in this relationship, that was not going to cut it. With one whiff of melting snow my sister and I were transported to our childhood, knowing the window of opportunity for this sort of dramatic landscape change around here is fleeting.

My husband was busy digging out things that had been lost in the snow banks for months and so I told him that we were going to load the girls in the pickup and head for the creek. He suggested we take the side-by-side instead so we wouldn’t get stuck. I ignored him.

And so off we went to find the creek as big as it’s ever been, rushing and flowing and cutting through ice and snow along its edges, melting and forming a new river right before our eyes. This was no stick-floating situation, we should have brought the kayak! We stood on its edges a while with our daughters, mesmerized. The we pulled them some good walking sticks and I held the big girls’ hands while we waded in a bit along it’s edges, until, inevitably, Edie got two boots full of ice cold creek and we hauled them back through the snow bank and up to the pickup to make our way back home.

It’s here my husband showed up with the four-wheeler. I dumped a gallon of water out of our daughter’s boots and we loaded our soggy selves into the pickup. From the driver’s seat I told my dearly beloved that we were heading home, put it four-wheel drive and crept toward my fate. In the rear view mirror I saw my husband on that ATV quietly watching to see how I was going to turn this big ‘ol pickup around on a skinny scoria trail surrounded by snow banks and mud and icy puddles.

And I could go into the step-by-step details here, but I think you’ve predicted it. Not only did I get stuck, I nearly landed the whole pickup in the creek. I did a number that not even my husband could undo. And the man, he didn’t even say, “I told you so” when I profusely apologized. He just poked his head in the window and replied, “We all gotta learn our lessons our own way.”

And then my sister called my brother-in-law to come with the towrope.

Oh, Happy Spring! If you need me I’ll be ignoring logic and the mud in my entryway. 

Prairie People Hit the Beach

Posted on by
3

Do you know what it takes to get out of the great white north in March?

Ask anyone who tried it the past couple weeks of spring break and they will tell you it was an act of God. Some of them never made it out.

Listen to the podcast here, or wherever you get your podcasts!

We were the lucky ones (cue dramatic music). Because for some reason our tactic of driving more north to Canada to catch a flight to Mexico actually worked. I mean, the flight was delayed ten hours, but the promise a 100 degree temperature change and unlimited access to tequila kept our spirits up. And also, not one soul left behind in North Dakota will tolerate any complaints about a March trip to Mexico in the middle of the blizzard, so I wouldn’t dare. Didn’t even want to send a picture of me blinding the country with my neon winter white ranch kid legs blazing in the sun. My plan was to just slip quietly away with my husband and my sunscreen and giant hat to pretend for a week that the only care we have in the world is how many more chips and guacamole we could possibly eat before it was time to eat an actual meal.

Traded our wool caps for vacation hats

I turn 40 this year. My husband had his turn in September. Mexico with friends was a gift we gave ourselves for making it this far. And now I’m scheming on what excuse I can come up with to do the same thing next year. Although maybe the only excuse a person needs to get away from it all is that, in the end, it makes you more tolerable to the people who have to live with you.

I will also take a moment here to plead my case for a week’s paid vacation in a tropical place for every person who has had to endure this forty-five month North Dakota winter. I don’t know who is going to pay for it, but I’m sure we can work it out in a bake sale or something…

So that’s where we’ve been, my husband and I. We left our kids behind with the in-laws to do things kids do with grandparents—bake cookies, eat cookies, bake cupcakes, eat cupcakes, snuggle, watch movies, swim in the big community pool and, apparently, partake in major shopping sprees. When they Facetimed us to model their new outfits, with a margarita in my hand and my feet in the pool it was hard to tell among us who was having more fun–and I threw my body down a 98 foot waterslide. In hindsight, the waterslide was a terrible idea, but I’ll never admit it, not to my kids anyway.

Oh, vacation life! Where nobody knows you except the yahoos you brought with you and so somehow you can convince yourself that you are the person who thinks 98-foot waterslides are fun and not just an un-prescribed enema/neti pot treatment.

In Mexico, it could not be clearer that the lot of us were northern folk. With one half of our crew of 14 residing in Canada and the other from North Dakota, our combined complexions lounging in the pool could likely be seen from space. And if that didn’t give it away, one of us puking on the 20-minute ferry ride to the island probably did. We are prairie people. The only waves we have up here are made of grain.

But in Mexico, we’re different. In Mexico, I scuba dive.

Yup. Just give me a 20-minute lesson on land and I’m expert enough to put my face underwater and not panic. And by not panicking I mean managing only to do the one thing required of me to not die while scuba diving and that is to breathe. Need me to actually swim, or push that button that releases air to send me up or down, or look at fish or pose for a picture or not float to the surface and need to be pulled back down? Can’t do it. Working on breathing here.

Oh, if just breathing were the only task. That’s the power of vacation mode.

If you need me I’m back home now, eating noodle soup, re-acclimating to my natural habitat and making plans for the bake sale.

Hosting friends, ranch style…

Posted on by
Reply

We’ve had company for a couple weeks and it’s been lovely to have new faces around to marvel at a place that has started to look more like work than love lately.

I needed that.

Thanks friends. I miss you.

Appreciating this rugged, imperfect place

IMG_8277 4

They left me with a plate of Snickerdoodles, a fridge full of half-finished dips, opened bottles of white wine, sheets to be washed and a heart full and lonesome at the same time.

A group of eight of my friends made their way to the ranch from Colorado, Minnesota and eastern North Dakota last weekend, fulfilling our promise to get together once a year, no matter what, since we first met 11 years ago during a hot summer spent moving picnic tables and cutting pies at a performing arts school.

Since then the group has grown to include boyfriends, spouses, babies, dogs and a cat on a leash, which I’d never thought I’d see on this ranch in my life. But I did, thanks to the eclectic and brilliant group of people I was honored to host for a few days in our rugged little mess of a life out here, surrounded by cattle, horseflies and bats swooping against the backdrop of a black and starry sky.

It’s funny the way the familiarity of a home changes when it’s full of people you love, some of them who’ve never set foot on the place.

IMG_8249

Before they arrived all I could see was the unfinished trim, the landscaping I thought I’d have done by now and the complete lack of Good Housekeeping magazine touches. We spent a half a year with their visit on the calendar thinking maybe we’d at least get the basement bathroom done, because anyone with a house knows that it takes impending company to get a long-planned construction project done.

But then we ran into haying season and I was on my own with a pressure washer, a lawnmower and a garage full of tools to do what I could around here.

Needless to say, we’re gonna have to wait until Thanksgiving to think about that bathroom project again, but I obsessed over it all nonetheless, because I’m my mother’s child after all.

And then they arrived and you couldn’t see the floor or the counters anyway for all the food and toys and bodies scattered about, talking and laughing. And not one of my friends inspected the tops of my light fixtures for dust, because we were too busy telling stories, cutting onions for guacamole and taking hikes around the farmyard, where I got a chance to see our place through their eyes.

IMG_8264

That was another gift they gave me that weekend: a gift of appreciation for our home. They picked wildflowers and rocks and marveled at the things we’ve labeled burdens or works in progress, like the old farm equipment and tumbled down fences that need to be repaired. In the midst of the overwhelming feeling that summer ranch work brings, I loved them for it.

And now they’re gone, leaving this place feeling a little electric, pulsing from the conversations and dropped forks and baby kisses, like it needs a moment to come back down to the quiet chaos of the life we lead, sending our love to them from this rugged, imperfect place.

IMG_8279 3IMG_8187IMG_8261IMG_8267IMG_8281

A goat and a Lincoln

Posted on by
3

A Goat and a Lincoln: When Childhood Memories Turn Whimsical
3-12-17
by Jessie Veeder
http://www.inforum.com

Some days, when I feel like life hasn’t thrown me an adventure worthy enough of reflection, I like to dig back in the archives for a memory to recount, the way you do when you find yourself sitting around the table having a beer with old friends.

We all have our favorite go-to stories in times like these, the kind that work in mixed company, just off-kilter enough to reveal something about you to new friends while reminding old ones you were a younger girl and you once drove 30 miles in the car you borrowed from your best friend’s dad, to pick up a goat.

img_7273

That’s the story I’m thinking of today.

It’s funny how far your own memories can detach from you, making you a character in the plot line of a life you once led. Everyone seems to remind me of the “hold on tight to these memories” refrain now that I’m a mom, but I should have been warned more when I was kid to hold on to the part of my life where I was 14 and reckless and my best friend was beside me in her dad’s nineteen-seventy-something Lincoln. We were driving on the highway alone for the first time in our lives, feeling grown up and capable, with a late spring rain hitting the windshield, turning the scoria roads bright pink against a neon-green landscape …

Road Home

We used to listen to our dads swap stories around the kitchen table when we were children playing make believe in the other room. We would hear them talk about old times — cars with no seat belts, dirt bike ramps and no helmets, horses that bucked too hard — and I wondered if one day my childhood stories might sound as whimsical to my kids.

I didn’t have much real experience driving outside the prairie trails and back roads of the ranch. But my friend and I were getting ready for our first year in high school rodeo, and we thought we needed to get ourselves a goat to practice tying.

Now, I’m not sure what our parents were busy with that day, or why on earth they at least didn’t send us with one of the ranch pickups to take the 30-mile drive in the rain alone to buy a goat from the neighbor’s farm, but that’s the way it happened.

We were an innocent enough pair as far as young teenagers go, and I was born with enough old woman running through my veins that my parents were pretty confident I wouldn’t dare hit any speed higher than 55 … and anyway, the Lincoln couldn’t go much faster.

But, oh how quickly that old lady was driven out of my 14-year-old veins when the open road was before me and my best friend was beside me, and there was hardly another car on the road. My confidence was building with every mile and every mile-per-hour I got closer to the speed limit, until I turned off the highway and onto the church road and decided to really gas it to get a good splash out of that puddle.

That Lincoln jerked hard to the right, fishtailing on the gravel before ramping off the shoulder of the road then sliding down the slope of the ditch and coming to rest at the front of the deep mud trench it buried itself in next to a freshly planted field.

The world outside that old car evaporated as my friend and I stared silently and straight ahead for the moment we needed to evaluate if we were still alive.

Screen Shot 2017-03-13 at 12.54.07 PM

Once we found our breath, we found each other, sucked back a few tears, and then, eventually, found the spare tire in the trunk, just in time for one of the neighborhood grandpas to find us.

What a sight we must have been there — two soggy, pathetic kids standing in the rain and in the agonizing moments between freedom and a lesson.

But maybe not as much of a spectacle we must have been when we finally headed back home, slow and steady down the highway, wild and young and free, just two best friends and our goat standing on the backseat, popping his head up between us.

img_7234

 

The moral of the old friendship story

Posted on by
1

Some old friendship keep you young. I’ve been lucky enough to grow up witnessing that phenomenon, one  adventure and mishap after another.

Here’s this week’s column.

The moral of the old friendship story
1-29-17
by Jessie Veeder
http://www.InForum.com

We were all sitting around in the living room visiting about weather, politics and how Edie managed to get her second bloody nose in two days in church that morning when Dad came sneaking sort of quietly through the door, slipping off his snow boots and wool cap before shuffling down the hall and sliding into the chair.

The last time we saw him he was at the top of the neighbors’ sledding hill, brushing the snow off of his Carharts after a lightning speed solo trip on the orange toboggan.

His best friend just came back from the shop with his chainsaw to cut down a dead tree that he thought was in the way of the epic run they were building.

All the kids had already gone in the house due to frozen cheeks and my little sister and I, exhausted from a half hour of trying to save Edie from the ideas she had about running, unassisted and unafraid, down the sledding hill, decided we would all be safer and happier in my living room.

img_4399-2

And so that’s where we left him — grampa Gene with his best friend, neighbor and grampa himself, Kelly — alone with two other dads, a slick sledding hill, a stack of sleds and no supervision.

“I bet if Gene and I took that orange sled down this hill together we could get going ’bout 150,” I heard Kelly say as he walked up the hill behind me.

And so I called Dad. I knew he wouldn’t want to miss out on a chance to go 150.

screen-shot-2017-01-30-at-2-17-15-pm

I should have known better, but neighbor Kelly is notorious for building epic escapades in the middle of an ordinary Sunday afternoon.

And in the winter, the go-to adventure is always their sledding hill, which is as meticulously cared for as an Olympic rated luge track.

“So, did you and Kelly go 150?” I asked Dad, thinking his unusual silence was a little suspicious.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “It was plenty fast.”

He sort of half-laughed the way a kid does when he’s holding on to something funny but knows giving in will undoubtedly mean having to explain himself.

Which is exactly what happened as he entered the living room scene, with my mom, little sister and husband all staring at him, knowing there was more to the story.

“What,” I said.

He scratched his head where his hat had been, making his silver, scruffy hair stand up straight and gave it up.

“Oh, it … it was bad,” he puffed. “Kelly got hurt. I don’t know …”

“What? How? Where?”

“Well, his arm I think. Think he tore a tendon. I don’t know … We tried snowboarding.”

“Dad!”

“Yeah, well it’s not a challenge for those young guys; they just fly right down there. It’s more fun for us. To see how far we can go. Anyway. I hurt my shoulder … ”

“Your shoulder?!”

“Yeah, but he wiped out pretty bad at the bottom, don’t know how much hand shaking he’ll be doing these days … ”

“Might be the end of his curling career … ”

screen-shot-2017-01-30-at-2-15-43-pm

And the conversation spun on from there about past near misses, heroic injuries and the epic 2-mile toboggan run from the hay field to the barnyard. One story blended into the next the way they do when you get an old guy rolling in memories with a friend who’s lived up the hill from him his entire life and can always be counted on to help with things like roundup, keys locked in cars, or kittens stuck behind refrigerators.

My favorite is the time he spent the evening at our house in the dark sitting on the floor in the living room while Dad sat in his easy chair, both holding BB guns pointed at the open cabinet under the sink waiting for the unwelcome pack rat they were hunting to make his next and final appearance, a really great scene in the wonderfully ordinary story of their long friendship.

“Well, if there’s a chance to go sledding I’m taking it,” Dad said when someone swung back around to ask how his shoulder was feeling.

And I think that might be the moral of the story, and maybe of friendship in general, no matter how old and reckless you get.

screen-shot-2017-01-30-at-2-16-01-pm

A heavy dose of escape…

Posted on by
15

img_2195

Yesterday afternoon, when Husband came home from work I escaped.

Yeah. I said it. Escaped. That’s the right word.  Some days around here are easier than others, and I think this baby is getting more teeth God help me, so I left her, and the man who helped make her, to it.

And I headed to the badlands.

Because I hadn’t been there in a while. Because  I was feeling overwhelmed in this house that’s never going to be baby proof enough. Because being a mom is hard sometimes.

Being a work from home mom to a baby who just learned to crawl is nearly impossible.

Because I needed some inspiration. A good breath. A minute.

Because it was a beautiful night and I didn’t want to miss out on it.

img_3142

img_3135img_3147img_3157

The badlands are right in our backyard and the North Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park is about a 45 mile drive from the ranch, but if I were a bird it wouldn’t take me nearly as long to fly there along the river.

I wished I was a bird yesterday evening as I drove through the park slowly with the windows open watching the rain clouds build up on the horizon, wondering how long it might pour on me and this landscape that has nothing to do but soak up the sky.

img_3170img_3256img_3258

Then I was feeling sort of bummed about it, about the rain. Like, finally I get out here and I won’t get the light bouncing off the buttes. I won’t get a sunset. I won’t get the great shadows the sun creates in the canyons. I won’t get to see it in all its late summer glory.

I won’t get what I want out of this little trip.

And I was right. I didn’t get what I wanted.

I got more.

Because just before the sky let loose a smattering of rain on a girl standing in the long grass, hair whipping across my face, a rainbow appeared like they tend to do out of nowhere and it stayed long enough for me get to know it a bit.

And to shake the boulder that unexplainably had been sitting heavy on my shoulders for the last few days.

img_3193img_3200img_3264img_3282img_3296img_3380img_3346img_3364img_3324img_3328Sometimes you don’t know what you need. And that’s ok.

But sometimes you do and you don’t take it. And that’s not ok.

I was reminded of that last night. Because I almost didn’t take the drive out there. I felt a little guilty about it. Like I should stay home and cook supper. Like it was going to be too late and the house was a mess. Like I had lots of work I could get done after the baby went down for the night. Like I was so tired.

But I went. I went because I wanted to. I went because it wasn’t asking much.

img_3419img_3467img_3452img_3501img_3465img_3427

 

Taking moments to exist in this wild space has always my best therapy. My best drug. And I got a heavy dose last night.

img_3526img_3545img_3571

And I’ve learned a heavy dose of escape makes the return so much sweeter…

img_3623

On Music and Motherhood

Posted on by
4

IMG_1744

Last week I packed up my guitar and my baby and the entire contents of both of our closets and headed out to the eastern part of the state to perform a couple really cool and completely different shows.

It was a memorable week of music for so many reasons. First, I’m still getting used to how fun and chaotic and hard it is to cart around a baby on these jobs that become adventures when you add tasks like changing diapers in parking lots and late night delirious giggle fests because the girl won’t sleep when there’s action.

But taking my mom with (or Granny Nanny, as we so lovingly refer to her) is the key to making any of it work at all. And after we met up with dad mid-week, leaving Husband at home to make sure the cows don’t get into my garden, the four of us navigated a schedule that included rehearsals and concerts and finding our way through the construction zone that becomes North Dakota in the summertime.

And in between those things we spent a beautiful day at the lake cabin with my grandparents, took Edie swimming,

IMG_1650IMG_1679

shopped for what the heck I was going to wear because I hadn’t decided yet and none of the five dresses I packed were going to work, ate pizza, got our hair done, met up with cousins and spent mom’s retirement on clothes for the baby. Seriously I had to physically take things out of her hands and put them back on the shelves because

#1: I don’t have room in Edie’s closet for all of this and more importantly

#2: We didn’t have room in the car.

Nope. After dad met us with the sound system, his guitar and his tiny little duffle bag, it took everything I know about construction and geometry (which is pretty much nothing) to get us all to fit with the doors closed.

IMG_1745

So naturally, at our last stop at the beautiful Dakota Sun Gardens Winery where we sang, mom bought two big baskets. One for my garden, because, you know, my birthday’s coming up, and one for her sister because it was yellow and gold and she works at NDSU.

Only the Veeder clan would have to unload the entire contents of a big SUV (shopping bags, three pairs of boots, a box of diapers, a collection of hand-me-down toys from my cousins, four suitcases, a stroller, two bags of caramel corn and the kitchen sink) on the lawn outside a beautiful venue in order to retrieve the guitars and sound system so we could get the party started.

Yup, we bring the class.

IMG_1750

There was a point right before I went up to sing that evening after helping mom wrestle the wiggling, screaming, overtired baby so that we could deal with her poop explosion (in the front seat of the car parked at the entrance of that beautiful place so that each guest could be greeted by a stench and baby crying just like they planned) that I looked at my friend and said something like, “I’m not sure this is all worth the hassle.”

I was sweating and disheveled and hadn’t even really thought about a set list.

But then, I was looking at one of my best friends who I don’t get to see very often. I was playing music on her home turf and she brought her family, baby boy included, who I adore (and spent a good part of my two hour gig staring at). And Edie chilled out as soon as she was up and about again, smiling her big smile at everyone. And she got to hang with her other gramma and aunt who made the trip all the way to the middle of the state to be with her, experience a unique place and listen to the music.

And I got to sing next to my dad and drink wine and tell stories to a captive crowd who were just so lovely.

IMG_1759

And the night before I stood on a big, beautiful stage while a song I wrote on the back of a horse came to life as a symphony of strings and horns and everything in between swept in behind me as I sang to a packed crowd in my boots and new dress under a setting sun.

It was an experience of a lifetime to have that many musicians, so much talent sitting in each of those chairs, take my notes and make them soar like that.

IMG_1755

In my wildest songwriter dreams, the ones I’ve been concocting out on in the hills singing at the top of my lungs since I was a little girl, I couldn’t have imagined it the way it was that night.

(Listen here…thanks dad for the recording…)

And I know it sounds like it’s all about me and the music, and maybe that week it was.

But I remember having a conversation with my husband about whether or not, after this baby was born, I would be able to continue working like this. Living out here in the middle of nowhere not many of my singing or speaking jobs are close to home.

But he told me he would help in whatever way he could. He said he couldn’t see any reason why not. And my family has taken the same plan of support and I couldn’t be more grateful. Because I think they see the value in it, not because it’s something that I want to do (and certainly not because it’s going to make me rich and famous) but in my history of performing I can say it’s made us some really funny and special memories, ones that we wouldn’t have otherwise.

And last week it proved to be true once again, sending us to see my grandparents one more time that summer, knowing they were in that big crowd listening, giving my cousin and her kids the chance to spend an entire evening with baby Edie, allowing my parents quality time with their granddaughter and sending me to meet and perform with some of the most talented musicians in the region.

 (With Blind Joe, a North Dakota singer and recent contestant on NBC’s The Voice, who also performed with the Symphony that night)

And the music gave my friend and I a chance to see each other again, my mother-in-law an excuse to take a road trip to see her sister and my aunt-in-law and excuse to do a girl’s night with friends.

And last week it reminded me that it never goes perfectly smooth when you have a kid in tow, but it is so worth it to hang on to the part of yourself that drives you.

IMG_1688

Even though it’s hard, as parents, I think remembering to feed our passions makes us a better family at the end of the day.

Even if the day doesn’t end until you roll into the driveway at 2 am on a Friday night in a car packed to the brim.

Yup, we’re still having fun so we’re off to do it again this week…